Relative paths

Repeat Signage allows the use of relative paths. In order to explain
what they are we are going to use a postal analogy.

If you look at Repeat Software's website, our postal address is:

2 Glentworth Road

Skegness

Lincolnshire

United Kingdom

Now we could write this as a series of levels:

Country

Region

Town

Street

Number

United Kingdom

Lincolnshire

Skegness

Glentworth Road

2

Now if we had a letter for someone at number 22 on the same street, we could
ask someone in our office to "take this to number 22". Now this is a
relative address. Because we are at number 2 and the letter is for
number 22, we can just say 22 and then the letter would be taken to the right
building. Now the absolute address for number 22 would be:

Country

Region

Town

Street

Number

United Kingdom

Lincolnshire

Skegness

Glentworth Road

22

which would be needed by someone in say America sending a letter to them.
Now if we had a letter for someone on the next street, then we could say
"take this to 55 Park Avenue" which again is a relative address to our
address. The absolute address for 55 Park Avenue would be:

Country

Region

Town

Street

Number

United Kingdom

Lincolnshire

Skegness

Park Avenue

55

Now we can't say to someone "take this to number 55" as from here it would
end up at 55 Glentworth Road, so we also need the street.

Now we could have a folder on our computers for each street in the UK and a
Word document for each building. For example:

c:\United Kingdom\Lincolnshire\Skegness\Glentworth Road\2.doc

c:\United Kingdom\Lincolnshire\Skegness\Glentworth Road\22.doc

c:\United Kingdom\Lincolnshire\Skegness\Park Avenue\55.doc

Now in computer terms we would write the relative addresses in the following
way.

From 2 Glentworth to 22 Glentworth, then we would write the relative
address as:

22.doc

From 2 Glentworth to 55 Park Avenue:

..\Park Avenue\55.doc

Now the above uses the ..\ notation. This means, go back a level, so
we are going back from the Glentworth Road folder to the Skegness folder
then back up a level to the Park Avenue folder. Relative paths are
good for when the information is copied to a different place. So let's
say that the United Kingdom folder was copied to another computer and put in
the:

d:\Planet Earth

so our 2 Glentworth address Word document now has an absolute address of:

but because we have used relative paths, i.e. Monday.rtf rather
then c:\Presentations\Lunch\Monday.rtf then the presentation will
find the files it needs. When the Monday.rtf file is then edited with
a new menu for Monday, then that new information will be displayed on
Monday.